To the chap who finds this bottled-enclosed message: Hello there, good sir! I trust you are safely upon sturdy ground and, I dare hope, doing well. Alas, I am not faring as solidly as you, old chap. You see, I…

FADE IN: EXT. THE BEACH - DAY It’s 1965. The beach is littered with surfboards. The girls wear bikinis that do not expose their navels. The boys wear long surfing shorts. LIZZIE (16, cute, little high-school student) sits on the…

Dear Spam

I love your meatlike product! It is delicious! I’ve eaten a spambled-eggs breakfast five days a week since ’58. These days, I can’t even stomach the taste of real pork anymore! I’m not kosher or anything, but give me Spam over God’s genuine pork any day!

I can’t believe you got your own Museum! Just like the dinosaur bones and the Picassos and Da Vincis! You’re a genuine chunk of Americana, Spam. The Spam Museum!

Wham! Zam! It’s Spam!

My grandson Zachary tells me you can get Spam by e-mail now. How interesting and exciting! How does this work? I’ve just bought myself a computer and I will be hooking it up sometime this summer. The e-mail address I will pick is: “Grandpa J @ AOL.Com.” Can you e-mail me Spam so I have some waiting for me when I hook it up? How do I go about actually getting the Spam in my hands? Do I have to take my e-mail to the post office?

Thank you, Spam!

Ka-zam! Spam!

Sincerely,
Josh Abraham

Josh Abraham was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent his early years in North Africa, working various jobs—in the weather bureau, in an automobile-accessory firm, in a shipping company—to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. As a young journalist, his report on the unhappy state of Muslims in the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938 he ran the Théâtre de l'Equipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, and Dostoevski. During World War II he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of Combat, then an important underground newspaper. Abraham's fiction, his philosophical essays, and his plays have assured his preëminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Abraham was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960, cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers. No, wait. That was Albert Camus.